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December 9, 2004
TT: Dear Diary
7:05 A.M.: I wake up an hour and a half ahead of the alarm clock, notice with disgust that sentences are already starting to take shape in my head, sigh deeply, and crawl down from the loft to face the inevitable and start writing my Friday column for The Wall Street Journal, an extra-long four-play special.9:00 A.M.: Laura Lippman arrives on my doorstep for a tour of the Teachout Museum, after which we stroll over to Good Enough to Eat. (Mmmm, bacon waffles!) Laura and I are old friends who rarely see one another nowadays, since she lives in Baltimore and spends half the year writing mysteries and the other half flying around the country on author tours, so we always try to have breakfast together whenever she's in Manhattan for more than a day. She brings greetings from Lizzie and Sarah, and I in turn tell her to go see Doubt as soon as she can. We then exchange the latest high-octane media gossip, furtively glancing around the room every few minutes to make sure nobody is eavesdropping.
11 A.M. Back to the office to finish my column, spurred on by an e-mail from my editor asking when the hell I'll be filing. (Actually, she was perfectly nice about it, but I like feeling put upon.)
12:35 P.M. All done! I ship the column off to the Journal, then check my e-mail. Maccers says I should bring Apple Blossoms II with me to the Phillips for my lecture. At the moment I'm inclined to agree, but I'm fickle when it comes to my favorites....
12:45 P.M.: Tidings of great joy: Our Girl in Chicago calls to say she can come to New York on December 29 to spend a few days as my houseguest. Midway through our chat I fire off a round-robin e-mail to all our blogfriends, advising them to make appointments now to meet the mysterious OGIC in person.
1:15 P.M.: My copy editor at the Journal returns my column with four easy-to-fix queries. I knock them off, then pause briefly to catch my breath and look out the window. Is that sunshine I see out there?
1:20 P.M.: Karen Wilkin reviewed the new Museum of Modern Art for the Leisure & Arts page of yesterday's Journal. I bookmarked her piece for later perusal, and now I read the last paragraph with approval:
But one glaring omission goes beyond such differences to become a serious distortion of art history. American modernism before Abstract Expressionism is virtually absent at the new MoMA. Only token representation is accorded pivotal figures like Stuart Davis and Arthur Dove; other influential pioneers, such as Marsden Hartley, are ignored. Davis is relegated to a corridor, hardly an appropriate place for an American master accorded a retrospective at MoMA in 1945. Clearly some things haven't changed for the better at the new museum. Let's hope it's a temporary aberration.
This gives me an idea. I call the Mutant on her cell phone and schedule a last-minute rendezvous.
2:00 P.M.: As if I didn't have enough to do today, I head down to MoMA and meet the Mutant, who teaches voice at the New School on Wednesdays and has three hours off between classes. We spend an hour and half looking at art, then grab a bite in the second-floor café. This is my first trip to the new MoMA since it opened to the public, and the galleries, as I'd suspected, don't look nearly so cavernous when they're full of gawkers. It's the Mutant's first MoMA visit ever (she came to New York after the old museum had closed), and the permanent collection blows her away, especially the Matisses, the Klees, and a gallery of paintings by Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis. "I think I'm just beginning to figure out that these guys were having fun," she says, grinning.
4:45 P.M.: Back home to collect today's snail mail (not too much, thank God) and check my e-mail.
5:30 P.M.: To bed for a pre-theater nap (an absolute must on days when I'm double- or triple-booked--otherwise I'm likely to nod off in my aisle seat).
6:40 P.M.: I revive myself with a scaldingly hot shower, tug a black sweater over my red, swollen flesh, and hail a cab for the theater district, calling my mother in Smalltown, U.S.A., from the back seat. (I almost always give my mother a call on the way to the theater, an idea I got from a rich friend who places all his calls from his limousine in order to save time. I may not have a limousine, but at least I've got a cell phone, not to mention a mother.)
7:45 P.M.: To the Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space to meet the Chichalicious Galley Cat and see Kristen Johnston (yum!) in Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz, which I'll be reviewing next week. Galley Cat claims to have seen only three plays in her life prior to our first meeting, but in fact she's a preternaturally shrewd theatergoer whose brain I always pick with care whenever we see a show together, stealing all the good lines I can carry off with me.
9:25 P.M.: To the Chimichurri Grill for a post-theater supper with the Cat. We discuss the play, our fellow bloggers, mood disorders, crushes past and present, and various other topics.
11:45 P.M.: Home for the night. The floor under my desk is ankle-deep in scripts, discarded press releases, crumpled envelopes, and the rest of the detritus of a writing day. If I had a lick of sense, I'd straighten up the office and fall into bed. Instead, I look at my schedule and note with relief that I have no morning or afternoon appointments on Thursday. (I'm meeting one of my Brazilian friends in the evening to hear Hilary Hahn with the New York Philharmonic.) Who needs sleep? I ask myself, kick aside the mess, check my e-mail, crank up Booker T. and the MGs on iTunes, and start blogging....
Posted December 9, 2004 12:32 PM
